The Opera's 95th season closes Friday

Cincinnati Opera winds up its 95th season in truly grand operatic
fashion with an opulent production of Puccini’s Turandot. The singing is (mostly) sublime, the spectacle is lavish
and all the production elements are executed with stylish precision.

The opera is a fantasy based on a play by the Venetian Carlo Gozzi. Turandot is
a Chinese princess bent on revenge for the rape and murder of an ancient
ancestor. If a prospective suitor fails to answer three riddles, off with his
head. That doesn’t discourage Prince Calaf, who manages to solve the riddles
and melt the ice princess’s reserve. Oh yes indeed, this is a fairy tale.

It’s also Puccini’s grandest opera with fabulous music incorporating romance,
drama and Chinese folk melodies. The score was unfinished when Puccini died in
1924; composer Franco Alfano composed the final section using Puccini’s
sketches. Despite Calaf’s signature aria “Nessun Dorma,” the best music belongs
to the chorus and the two female leads.

Biggest ups to the chorus. They sing with power, precision and a remarkable dynamic
control thanks to Chorusmaster Henri Venanzi, who celebrates his 41st year with
the CO. Unlike most other operas that feature one big choral number and that’s
it, Turandot’s chorus is onstage for
almost the entire piece.

Marcy Stonikas is a formidable Turandot, physically and vocally. Her voice has
the cold, steely edge for an ice princess but there’s a hint of warmth that
fully emerged in the final scene to convey a sense of humanity. “In questa
reggia” is Turandot’s big aria and Stonikas did not disappoint. Hers is one of
the most exciting voices I’ve heard in a long time and I hope she’ll be back.

The role of the slave Liu usually steals the shows and this was no exception.
French soprano Norah Amsellem sings with haunting delicacy and tremendous
power. It’s a performance to savor, and she garnered the evening’s loudest
ovations. And her limping on the stage was no act — she injured an ankle
earlier in the week and was using a brace.

Frank Porretta’s Calaf was barely audible in the first act. He may have been
having vocal problems because he powered up in the second act, but “Nessun
Dorma” was under pitch and lagged behind the orchestra. Let’s hope he recovers
for the remaining performances.

As the court officials Ping, Pang and Pong, Jonathan Beyer, Julius Ahn and
Joseph Hu were genuinely responsive Puccini’s score, offering characters
ironically comic and human as they sing of returning home. They also executed a
vaudeville soft shoe routine with panache.

Under the baton of Ramón Tebar, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra gave a
stunning performance of this magnificent score. There are so many gorgeous
subtleties, from the loudest of gongs to shimmering woodwinds and strings, and
they were heard to wonderful effect.

Red is the operative color for André Barbe’s sets and costumes, with black and
white running close seconds. A huge red lacquer arch is the main set piece,
punctuated by huge white heads on pikes, reminders of the executed princes. The
chorus, mandarins and dancers are swathed in black and red. Ping, Pang and Pong
sport sky-blue robes, and Turandot and Emperor Altoum are garbed in white. It’s
opulent but never excessive.

Most impressive are Renaud Doucet’s staging and choreography. The huge cast of
choristers, supernumeraries and dancers move with confidence and precision. Fortunately
for us all, the leads are equally graceful and they respond to each other with
more than outstretched arms. Doucet creates stage pictures that, for all their
scope, never lose focus on the performers. The dancers are a special pleasure.
Their costumes with multiple flags projecting from the back don’t make for easy
movement, but they make it look effortless.

Go see it. And go hear it. There aren’t many opportunities to see spectacle
like this, unless it’s Andrew Lloyd Webber, who mined Puccini’s melodies for
inspiration. Puccini did it way better.

The production continues Saturday

Cincinnati Opera's Don
Pasquale was a delight and, so far, the season’s best overall
production. Burak Bilgili’s Pasquale and Alexey Lavrov’s Malatesta share
the honors for outstanding performances and the entire enchilada (as Peter
Schickele would say) was directed by Chuck Hudson, with production elements and
costumes built by Arizona Opera.

The setting is
1950s Hollywood and Don Pasquale is a silent film star trying to make a comeback
by marrying a starlet. We get Don’s backstory through a series of black-and-white
film clips of his biggest hits, press notices and his subsequent failures in
talkies and as a director. They’re brilliantly effective and the opening
segments are in synch with the overture.

Pasquale’s black-and-white environment takes on
color as he decides to seek a bride, and by Act II, the only gray spot is
Pasquale himself.

Burak Bilgili brought crisp articulation and robust
presence to the aging Pasquale. He’s a gifted comic and he handled the physical
demands (and there were plenty) moving gracefully across the stage. His foil
Malatesta was Polish baritone Alexey Lavrov; the phrase "silky
elegance" is the best descriptor of his voice. Since he’s scheduled to
sing this role at the Met, it doesn’t look like he has to worry about future
gigs, but if he ever does, he’s got a great future as Dracula — he can handle a
cape with the best of them.

Tenor Ji-Min Park sang Ernesto with clarity and
sweetness, especially “Com’e Gentil” but the stage business covered up a lot of
the loveliest passages. Eglise Gutierrez broke her ankle earlier in the week,
but she navigated the stage in such a way that unless you saw her wearing a
slightly different slipper, you wouldn’t suspect anything was amiss. But
something was because she was a
restrained Norina and I frequently couldn’t hear her. She might have been in a
lot of pain and backstage, she had on a boot, so I’m more than willing to give
her a break. One hopes she'll notch it up by Saturday.

Richard Buckley led a lively reading of this
delightful score. Hudson’s staging is based on his studies with Marcel Marceau
and the best example of that was the staging “Com’e Gentil.” It was hilarious
(the long arm reaching for Pasquale’s keys) but it upstaged the aria. Oh well.
The audience loved it. The actors proved to be deft comedians, especially Park,
whose wonky Ernesto can’t do anything right. Of course the revenge duet got an
encore.

Fun, fun, fun. And with a ‘50s setting, there might
have been a T Bird lurking backstage.

Cincinnati Opera presented debut performance Tuesday night

Morning Star,the new opera by composer Ricky Ian
Gordon and librettist William Hoffman, had its world premiere last night before
a near-capacity audience in the School for Creative and Performing Arts’ Corbett
Theater. Based on a 1940 play by Sylvia Regan, the story follows a Jewish
immigrant family in the early decades of the 20thcentury. Think of
it as a follow-up to the Tevye family from Fiddler
on the Roof coming to America and having to abandon all that tradition.

Morning Star was originally
commissioned by Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Goodman Theater but was dropped
when artistic differences killed the collaboration. In 2012, Opera Fusion: New
Works offered Gordon and Hoffman the opportunity to rework Morning Star. The final result is light-years from what was heard
in workshops, but to paraphrase a line from the opera, the story abides.

Gordon writes beautifully for the voice and his score has moments of dramatic
intensity, playfulness and heartbreaking beauty. He’s a favorite among American
singers, so it’s not surprising how great the singing is — but that’s also
thanks to Ron Daniel’s staging.

Daniels also guided the shaping of the piece, strengthening the drama and
developing characters. But there are still problems with the libretto. Many of
Hoffman’s images and lines are poetic but much of the rhymed verses are more
distracting than descriptive. But when he nails it, the words and music are a
gorgeous synthesis.

The Triangle Shirtwaist fire in Manhattan serves as a framing device and a
looming presence. On March 25, 1911, the Triangle erupted in flames, killing
146 workers — mostly young immigrant women who were trapped by locked doors,
non-functioning elevators and broken fire escapes.

The opera’s prologue is a brilliant evocation of the public viewing of the
victims in the factory, which took place during a torrential downpour. Against
a background of images from that day, singers clad in raincoats and holding
black umbrellas recite accounts of what took place as the music swirls into a
collective moan.

The Triangle Shirtwaist fire serves as a framing device and a looming presence.
In March 1911, the Triangle erupted in flames, killing 146 workers, mostly
young immigrant women, who were trapped by locked doors, non-functioning
elevators, and broken fire escapes.

The opera’s prologue is a brilliant evocation of the public viewing of the
victims in the factory, which took place during a torrential downpour. Against
a background of images from that day, singers clad in raincoats and holding
black umbrellas recite accounts of what took place as the music swirls into a
collective moan.

Widow Becky Felderman presides over her family of three teenaged daughters and
a young son. Like many immigrant families, the Feldermans have a border, Aaron,
who happens to come from the same village and is a friend of the family. He
also happens to be in love with Becky.

It’s a terrific cast made up of some of the best American voices out there. Jeanine
De Bique stole the show as Pearl with a velvety, lyric mezzo that elevated her
aria “I See Colors” into a showpiece. Soprano Twyla Robinson’s Becky has a
sweetness tempered by determination and she’ll break your heart when she sings
“The Family Abides.”The daughters get
powerful performances from Elizabeth Zharoff, Jennifer Zetlan and Elizabeth
Pojanowski.

Andrew Bidlack sings the title song with great style. Andrew Lovato is a
sensitive and sympathetic Harry Engel, the unhappy husband of Sadie Felderman.
Morgan Smith is an amazing baritone and I wish that Aaron’s character had more
depth, but Smith makes it his own and it’s worth hearing.

Riccardo Hernandez’s scenic design incorporates the Triangle factory and
Wendall K. Harrington’s projections are used to great effect, particularly in
the prologue and in the final ensemble in which the fire claims its victims.

Is it perfect? No. But it’s got staying power, a score with a lot of memorable
music, and this production features voices you should hear. Bravo to Cincinnati
Opera and Opera Fusion: New Works for fostering this project.

And damned if I can’t get that song “Morning Star” out of my head.MORNING STAR continues through July 19 at SCPA’s Corbett Theater. More info: cincinnatiopera.com.

In August, the Corbett Foundation announced it was closing shop, ending
one of the city's most generous streams of philanthropy. It turns out that
there was still one more gift in the hopper.

On Tuesday, The University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music's J. Ralph Corbett
Distinguished Chair of Opera received the final award of $1 million, a gift
that will provide additional support for scholarships, touring productions, an
archive and partial support of the named professorship currently held by Robin
Guarino.

CCM's
Opera Department is one of the nation's finest. Two of its recent graduates
were winners in the Metropolitan Opera's national auditions, and its alumni
perform in theaters all over the world.

Robin Guarino is one of the most sought-after
directors and has staged productions at the Metropolitan Opera, Indiana
University, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, San Francisco Opera and Brooklyn
Academy of Music.

Comic musical duo Igudesman
& Joo performs at the School for Creative and Performing Arts’ Mayerson
Theater tonight, presented by the Constella Festival. Korean-British pianist
Richard Hyung-ki Joo and Russian violinist Aleksey Igudesman mix Classical
music with other popular genres and humor for a wholly entertaining
performance. Check out this popular performance (which has more than 7 million
YouTube views):

CityBeat writer Anne Arenstein spoke to Joo about the duo's unique spin on performing the classics.

It was hate at first sight when Igudesman
and Joo met. There’s a hilarious account of what brought them together
on their website, but according to Joo, the moment of truth came a
couple of months later.

“We shared the notion that the Classical
music world which we loved so much was taking itself way too seriously,”
Joo says. “Going to concerts was like going to a funeral.”

“We were young and we didn’t know much
but we knew Classical music was full of life,” he continues. “Through
our own projects and the music we wrote, we could at least create events
that we would want to go to.”

Continues through July 27 at SCPA

Don't walk. Run to the School for Creative and Performing Arts (SCPA) to catch the remaining performances of La Calisto, an opera composed in 1653 that's equal parts romance and raunch, performed by a superb cast of singers, instrumentalists and dancers who are all clearly having a wonderful time.

Composer Franceso Cavalli was savvy enough to take opera out of palaces and into public theaters, where he made a fortune. He used the story of virgin Calisto, a follower of the goddess Diana, who is seduced by Jove and transformed into a bear by the vengeful Juno. Diana has her own problems with hormones and so does another of her followers. There's not much sacred and a lot of profane, not to mention profanity.

There's a lot of transformation going on: Jove disguises himself as Diana to get it on with Calisto, meaning that bass baritone Daniel Okulitch puts on a long white robe, dons a wig and sings in convincing falsetto. A horny follower of Diana is sung by a male, a high soprano takes on the role of a frustrated satyr — and just what gender are the rest of Pan's satyrs and Diana's huntresses? Ted Huffman's staging is witty and occasionally wild; the battle between Pan's and Diana's tribes seems to involve more than the six or seven dancers onstage, thanks to the acrobatic choreography of Zack Winokur.

Okulitch sings Jove with the requisite authority and gravitas, which also renders him ridiculous when lust for Calisto overtakes him. Okulitch is equally adept singing in falsetto, which is no easy task when it involves vocal ornamentation. Andrew Garland, a great recitalist with innate comic instincts, is a natural as Jove's gofer Mercury.

Aaron Blake may be diminutive in stature but he has a huge, ringing tenor, and he was a hilarious Pan. Michael Maniaci sang Diana's lover Endymion, his pure male soprano giving the role genuine tenderness. Lyric tenor Thomas Michael Allen sang the role of libidinous nymph Linfea.

The chamber orchestra is joined by the phenomenal Catacoustic Consort and during intermission, a lot of the audience stopped by the orchestra pit to check out the theorbos, Baroque harp, lirone and viola da gamba. Conductor David Bates led a lively, nuanced reading of the score.

The action plays out on a unit set used for last year's Galileo Galilei, with a wonderful star curtain that descends as Calisto ascends to the heavens to become Ursa Major, or the Big Dipper.

La Calisto is Cincinnati Opera's first Baroque opera and they couldn't have made a better choice. It's heavenly.

CAC performance curator Drew Klein reports from NYC

The main event Thursday
evening was not a part of Performa 13. Instead, the evening saw my virgin visit
to the Metropolitan Opera to take in the final night of composer (and frequent
Cincinnati visitor) Nico Muhly's Two Boys.
Muhly became the youngest composer to be commissioned by the Met when they
asked him to create a new work in 2006. Having a run in 2011 in London in a
co-production with English National Opera, Two Boys finally made its American
debut last month.

Based on true
events in Manchester, England, 10 years ago, the story centers on a seemingly
normal 16-year-old boy and his involvement in a confusing web of chat room
relationships that ultimately lead to him stabbing and nearly killing a 13-year-old boy. It was, shall we say, not your standard opera fare. While I've not
been to many an opera in my life thus far, I don't imagine there have been many
to have featured projected chat acronyms and two separate instances of onstage
masturbation. But on to the show.

The story of Two Boys is a complicated one, without question. A young boy has been
stabbed, his friend and the only witness, Brian, is the key suspect, and an
over-worked and under-appreciated police detective is tasked with putting the
pieces together in a case she never wanted to take. As we begin to learn more
about Brian, we are shown a world of chat room conversations and desperate boys
seeking connections that mean something. By the end, we understand that the
young boy pretended to be three different people in various roles and chats
with Brian, concocting an insanely complex story before, essentially,
convincing Brian to stab him while he would repeat, “I love you, bro” to the
dying boy. Everyone has access to a search engine, so I'll let you look up the
story on your own...

A certain
triumph for Two Boys is the set design and realization of an online world on
a physical stage. Multiple large-scale projections land upon movable walls that
dance across the stage at various depths. Frequently these walls become
transparent and reveal young people inside, half-illuminated by laptop screens.
The multimedia execution inspired and amazed, serving to highlight the
production's digital world concept and add a new and exciting layer to a
traditional performance form.

Knowing Muhly's work rather well, and having
enjoyed the chance to see him twice in Cincinnati in the past 18 months as part
of MusicNOW and Tatiana Berman's Constella Festival, I was eager to hear what
he had done for Two Boys. I was somewhat surprised — though pleased — to find
that this work did not veer too far from his compositional oeuvre; dark with
intricate rhythms, the score never threatens to take complete control of the
production, while the influence of modern composers like Benjamin Britten and
Meredith Monk, as he acknowledged in the program notes, could be felt
throughout. For me, the standout compositional moments came in the form of
choral scenes performed by the company carrying laptops in their hands, faces
lit and animated by the screens, feeling like a reference to the pull of the
digital world and the countless hours young people like Brian spend seeking
something of meaning in an environment of empty promises. Multi-layered lines
repeating chat room requests and responses, the voices build to a disorienting
swirl. In these moments, the marriage of precocity, tradition, and progressivism
felt too immense to not hold your breath.

From CCM to New York City Opera

For several years Joshua Jeremian seemed to be onstage everywhere in Cincinnati. He was a regular in opera productions at UC’s College-Conservatory of Music, where he was pursuing a master’s degree and then an artist’s diploma (additional graduate-level training) as an opera singer. But he was glad to find performing opportunities with many Cincinnati perfroming arts institutions. In 2005 he played a pair of princes in Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati’s holiday musical, Sleeping Beauty. (In fact, the big-voiced baritone was nominated for a 2006 Cincinnati Entertainment Award for his performance at ETC.)

Not much theater as summer gets rolling locally, but it is time for Cincinnati Opera, which opened its 91st season on Thursday with a production of Verdi's Rigoletto. It's a tragic story about a foolish father who tries to protect his daughter by hiding her away from the world, leading to her death.

The Cincinnati Playhouse's production of The Fantasticks is a great choice for theater this weekend, but you might have a hard time finding seats. I've had two friends tell me they tried to get in and were told that the performance they hoped for was sold out. You can try to get on a waiting list (box office number is 513-421-3888) for a show that's really worth seeing.